VIC
3982 posts
I personally wouldn't go near for simple health reasons but I also don't quite understand what the problem is with anyone who chooses to interfere with this dead lump of flesh and bones. Not like touching it is going to make it dead-er. And especially as these clowns won't get off their collective arses to remove it to make the beach safe for families. And if the museum wants to experiment on the bones, why aren't they down there cutting it up?
VIC
228 posts
Oh wow, this is angered me this morning. What a croc of faecal matter. I have never been a fan of anyone who sits on their high horse barking orders and rules at those below them, but this is ridiculous. How can it be that it is illegal to take anything, but it is fine for it to lay there rotting for what could be months. PTWoody you summed it up perfectly, where the hell are these 'authorities', why aren't they down there collecting the remains.
I wonder if there was a shark attack OR an outbreak of some sort of infection in the local community, if those same alleged 'authorities' would claim any sort of responsibility?
NSW
1525 posts
Someone should point that out to the Japs.....
WA
354 posts
It isn't every day a blue whale washes up dead. I would say it is a rare opportunity for researchers to take samples. This one looks small- a calf? Probably trying to figure out why it died.
Also if they do plan to keep the skeleton I would say they are figuring out the logistics. Things like- How and where would we clean bones covered in decomposing flesh of that size? How do we transport a rotting carcass? Do we chop it up? Can we get a dump truck on the beach? What do we do with the 100's of kg of flesh? Is it better to let nature help us decompose most of it before we move it?
Then there is the government red tape- all the paperwork that need to be signed off on.
There have been a lot of whale calf's turning up dead over here. Once sampling is done they are usually buried under the beach. I helped a friend and dolphin research scientist put a dolphin in the freeze and that was an ordeal...let alone a whale.
VIC
228 posts
Just my opinion, but I was really peeved when I read about the charges.
The authorities shouldn't be able to just leave this one on the beach. Many of us have joked about this for some time, since we first saw it. If authorities are going to be able to charge someone with taking bones, they should wear some responsibility aswell, for letting it sit there. Its sitting on a well used beach, it's not cordoned off, there are houses at the top of the hill, and during high tide parts of it enter the water.
I would imagine that the locals and regulars to Flinders would be more annoyed than I.
